Abstract [en]

The level of gender equality is commonly referred to as holding explanatory power in relation to sexual violence in armed conflict by feminist scholars, as well as advocacy groups and policy makers. However, statistical evidence for such argumentation has been so far missing which this study seeks to remedy. An empirical test of how gender equality affects the prevalence of conflict-related sexual violence is carried out through OLS regression on a large-n dataset of armed conflicts in Africa between 1989 and 2009. Gender equality is theorized and operationalized in terms of social constructivist notions of gender and gendered power-relation in the family, and thus measuring gender equality on a group level that sexual violence is commonly measured and studied. The more asymmetry exists in the pre-conflict gendered power-dynamics the higher the level of sexual violence in conflict is expected. Findings confirm the hypothesis validating thus the feminist scholarship but also identifying a need for further empirical research.